brushfire"This, yes, this, it was always like this." -Stanley Koehler
REFLECTIONS OF AN EMPTY NESTER
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If you haven’t heard about children being “ripped” from their parents while attempting to cross the border into the United States, you've been living under a rock. I’ve been fairly inundated on the topic, having read many articles and layers of arguments on social media.
Mainly what I've seen is outrage about a practice viewed as cruel and immoral. Whatever the circumstances, the children are innocent bystanders, not pawns to be used to stop immigrants and refugees from entering the U.S., legally or otherwise. Many of these families are fleeing unspeakable circumstances in their own countries and seeking a better life. Our country was founded by people who did this very thing. After all, the Statue of Liberty, according to the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed at her base, is the “Mother of Exiles.” “From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome…." Many assert it’s the law and it happened under the Obama administration. Neither is true. The law has to do with illegal entry, a misdemeanor, and illegal reentry, a felony. Nowhere does any law dictate children must be separated from their parents, a practice enacted within the past two months to deter people fleeing atrocities in their own countries from attempting to cross into the U.S. It’s punitive and presumes guilt before these immigrants have been properly vetted. Taking children from their parents without a clear reunification plan is cruel and unusual punishment. It violates human decency and everything our country represents. Moreover, this policy wasn't in place under Obama’s administration. What happened in 2014 was a sudden influx of unaccompanied minors coming into the U.S. who were temporarily housed in border patrol lock-ups until they could be properly cared for by the Department of Health and Human Services. In 80 percent of the cases, this meant releasing them to their parents, who were already in the country. The difference during the Obama administration was families who arrived together were kept together in detention centers until their cases were reviewed and it was determined they had a valid reason to come here or they acted illegally and were subject to deportation. But this practice is a far cry from terrorizing small children who have arrived in a foreign land, only to be stripped from the one known and familiar thing in their world — their mother or father. Finally, two wrongs don’t make a right. If this in fact did happen under Obama’s administration and the public is only finding out about it now, we should still stop it, not use previous wrongdoings to justify an abhorrent policy that will cause irreparable damage to vulnerable children. As a mother, images of crying children haunt me. I believe any parent, separated for even one terrifying instant from a child, can relate. The most sensationalized reports are a father separated from his family at the border who hung himself in lock-up and a breastfeeding infant taken from its mother. I can’t stop thinking about that mother who can no longer feed or care for her baby. Only women who have breastfed their children will understand the physical pain this separation inflicted on her, but I hope we all can empathize with the emotional anguish she — and all parents separated from their children, no matter their age — endured. Religious leaders have condemned these actions. The United Nations human rights office has called for the United States to immediately halt this practice. Medical groups and associations have denounced it. Private citizens have rallied together and protested. It’s time for the government to listen and stop this inhumane policy. We may no longer be a country promising to help “the homeless, the tempest-tost” or those “yearning to breathe free,” but whatever means we choose to limit access through that “golden door,” let’s at least keep the lamp of liberty lit.
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Mary Anne BrushJournalist, fiction writer, wife and mother |